The leading Democratic super PAC quickly transformed President Trump’s ad-libbed comments about ordering a reduction in coronavirus testing into a sharp attack and began airing the advertisement on television in four key battleground states.
Trump during a Saturday campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, suggested he asked government officials to reduce coronavirus testing in the United States because the increase in tests is giving the false impression that COVID-19 infections are on the rise, jeopardizing the economic recovery. “When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people: ‘Slow the testing down, please,’” Trump said.
By Monday, Priorities USA turned the president’s remarks into a 30-second spot accusing him of cutting back on tests to hide his failure to quell the pandemic and boost his political fortunes versus presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. “Instead of working to slow the spread, Donald Trump said he’s slowed down the testing,” said the voiceover in the ad, which was scheduled to run in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro insisted the president was joking. “Come on, now, Jake. You know it was tongue-in-cheek,” Navarro said in a Sunday morning interview on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper. But in an interview with Scripps television Monday, the president did not exactly deny giving the order.
“We do more testing than any country in the world by far. Twenty-five million tests,” Trump said Monday. “Other countries do 1 million. Every time you do a test, as you do more tests, it shows more and more cases. If other countries aren’t doing, or if we did slow it down, we wouldn’t show nearly as many cases.”
Priorities USA is running a second version of the advertisement on digital platforms.
“Donald Trump made it clear that he ordered a slowdown of coronavirus testing to protect his own ego,” said Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA, the super PAC that has been designated as the preferred outside group of the Biden campaign. The group boasts that it is spending more than $2 million weekly on digital and television advertising targeting Trump, as part of a $200 million effort to elect Biden, the former vice president.
Trump trails Biden by substantial margins in most national polls, although survey data shows that he is more competitive in the battleground states that will decide the election.
Trump is touting his efforts to reduce the number of people afflicted by the coronavirus and bring the pandemic under control.
In recent weeks, the president has shifted from COVID-19 containment to encouraging businesses to reopen as part of a broader push to rebuild an economy shocked into recession by mandated lockdown.
